“Is not the sky a father and the earth a mother, and are not all living things with feet or wings or roots their children?”
—Black Elk
“The Divine Matrix is the container that holds the universe, the bridge between all things, and the mirror that shows us what we have created.”
—Gregg Braden
The Sioux and the Navajo, like many other indigenous cultures, knew long ago what quantum physicists only recently have come to understand:
Everything that exists in the universe is related and interconnected.
Separateness, as we perceive it, is an illusion.
To recognize this reality is to awaken to oneness and see the world anew. What we see determines what we experience.
When we see other communities of people as separate from our own, it’s much easier to denigrate them. When we see ourselves as being separate from nature, exploitation follows. Conversely, what if you saw everyone on Earth as a relative? What if every tree, flower, rock, fish, bird, and river was seen for what it is—another manifestation of the single energy source that also dwells within you?
Navajo culture and spirituality are founded on a concept they describe as K’e. As my friend from the Navajo Nation, Thomas Walker, once told me, “K’e is about understanding our connectivity to all things. We are connected to Mother Earth. We are connected to Father Sky. So we have relationships to all that exists in the world around us. As a result, we are never alone. We are never disconnected. Everywhere you turn you have relationship.”
The Sioux describe this universal connectivity as Mitakuye Oyasin, which translates to “We are all brothers,” or “All things are one thing.” I remember visiting with my friend Nick Tilson one day at the Thunder Valley Community Development Center on the Pine Ridge Reservation. He pulled out a Lakota medicine wheel and described for me its meaning: “Our medicine wheel represents all things being connected.”
Decades earlier, Black Elk, the great Oglala holy man, also spoke of this universal connectivity:
“There I stood on the highest mountain of the world, and I knew more than I saw, I understood more than I knew, because I was seeing in a sacred manner. And what I saw were the hoops of all the nations interlocking in one great circle.”
And now, in the twenty-first century, modern physicists studying particles at the subatomic level are drawing the same conclusion. There is a universal energy field that connects all things across all space and time. And here’s the essential understanding: We are all manifestations of that unified field of energy. We are the universe looking at itself. We are the universe creating itself. Our consciousness allows us to impact the field and form its future.
As Gregg Braden writes in his book, The Divine Matrix:
The key [understanding] is that the energy connecting everything in the universe is also part of what it connects! Rather than thinking of the field as separate from everyday reality, the experiments [modern science] tell us that the mundane visible world originates as the field: It’s as if the blanket of the Divine Matrix is spread smoothly throughout the universe, and every once in a while, it “wrinkles” here and there into a rock, tree, planet, or person that we recognize. Ultimately, all of these things are just ripples in the field, and this subtle yet powerful shift in thinking is the key to tapping the power of the Divine Matrix in our lives.
This sounds complex, but it’s actually super simple. The funny part is, the clues surround us at every turn.
“The kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the Earth, but men do not see it.”
—Jesus
Throw a rock into a pond, and both the rock and the water move.
Cut a tree and it falls.
Pick a flower and it dies.
Trip another person and they fall.
Cut yourself and you bleed.
The world changes every moment you engage with it, in both visible and invisible ways. Consider human interaction:
When you love someone, they feel loved.
When you thank someone, they feel valued.
When you’re tense, others become tense.
When you cry, others feel sadness.
Everything changes when anything changes. This is because it’s all one field of energy, manifesting in countless iterations across space and time.
Whoa, that’s too deep, you may tell me. But it’s not. It’s fundamental, and the knowledge of our ONENESS can be harnessed to do immense good.
For example, one could reengineer an entire company around this single idea. Use the organization to spread love. Use it to disperse power. Use it to help every individual feel trusted, respected, valued, heard, and safe. In return, the organization soars. Is that surprising? Of course not. The organization is one with the people who comprise it.
When others soar, you rise. When others fall, you’re pulled down. In a world of oneness, winning isn’t winning unless everyone is winning.
Seeing our oneness can feel overwhelming because it contradicts most of what Western society has taught us to see. But the Sioux still see it, as do the Navajo. So do modern physicists. And so, too, can you.
And when you do see the oneness, you will forever change that single field of energy and its course.
“A Jedi’s strength flows from the Force.”
—Yoda
“Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are . . . part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”
—Max Planck, physicist
“All things share the same breath—the beast, the tree, the man. The air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.”
—Chief Seattle, Suquamish and Duwamish chief
“When we understand us, our consciousness, we also understand the universe and the separation disappears.”
—Amit Goswami, physicist
“You must unlearn what you have learned.”
—Yoda
Thank you for considering my thoughts. In return I honor yours.
Every voice matters. Nestled between our differences lies our future.
